LoL- World Championships 2017

The 2017 LoL World Championships are over after a string of upsets and surprise victories. Samsung Galaxy are your 2017 champions after defeating defending champions SK Telecom T1 3-0 in the grand final. The all-Korean affair was a rematch of last year’s final, with SSG securing their second World Championship title and their first since 2014 (previously named Samsung Galaxy White).

The viewership stats for the 2017 LoL World Championships were absolutely off the charts in setting new ground. Over 4 billion hours of the tournament was watched amongst worldwide viewers, with the majority of those Chinese. The peak single time viewers maxed out at 106 million when SKT Telecom T1 played Royal Never Give Up, a Chinese team, in the decisive game five of the semi-finals. The next closest was Samsung Galaxy taking on Team WE, another Chinese team, in the semi-finals when 90 million people tuned in to watch. The finals only ranked fourth at a peak of 75 million viewers.

The tournament being held in China will have had a huge effect on the overall viewer stats, with the peak viewers from that country being over 100 million alone online. It’s also likely that the record was broken for live viewers after the Grand Finals were held at the Beijing National Stadium, packed full of 80,000 avid LoL fans.

The end of this year’s tournament probably creates more questions than it was meant to answers. Are Longzhu Gaming for real, or were they just a one season wonder? Is it time for Samsung Galaxy to rule the LoL World? Can SK Telecom T1 bounce back to former glory? Is Faker still the best player in the world? Will we ever see an American or European team make the final, or even win a World Championship?